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Albertson’s
Pulls Out of New Orleans
by Richard Grayson I’ll never forget June 11, 2002, the first day Desiree checked out my groceries. I’d missed the store’s grand opening earlier in the day, but in the afternoon I was at the new Albertson’s on Tulane Avenue near Jefferson Davis Parkway. I wanted to be reminded of home. Pushing my shopping cart through the aisles, I felt transported back to Idaho, and I quickly snapped up my favorite store-brand foods, like the container of Dry Roasted Peanuts that beat the hell out of Planter’s; the green plastic bags of Albertson’s frozen veggies, including my favorite, Fiesta Mix; and the chocolatier-than-chocolate diet frozen yogurt. If I thought I was in heaven then, well, you can imagine when I got into checkout line number 4 and discovered Desiree. Look, being a math major, I’m not so good at describing stuff, but to me, Desiree was a goddess, so beautiful that looking at her almost made me a little nauseous. But it didn’t stop me from noticing her big brown eyes, her lustrous hair, her breasts like a sparrow taking wing. She filled out her blue Albertson’s polo shirt like it wanted to make love to her. Her name tag, DESIREE C., and below that the Albertson’s motto, SERVICE FIRST!, told me almost everything I wanted to know. As her hands guided my bags of frozen veggies over the scanner, she managed to hit them right on the bar code every time. And after she rang up my collard greens and then my field peas with snaps, she looked up at me and smiled. For a minute I wondered if a geeky white boy from Boise would have a chance with her. I’d gotten an Albertson’s Preferred Card before I started shopping and had already put it on my keychain. When Desiree was finished, she took out a red pen and circled the amount I’d saved by being a Preferred Customer. She nodded and said, “Hope to see you again.” “Me too,” I said. “Good luck.” It took me about four more visits to work up the nerve to tell her that my hometown was also the hometown of her employer, one of the biggest supermarket chains in the country. I explained how Joe Albertson had come to Boise during the Depression and opened his first store with $2,500 he borrowed from his wife’s aunt. And how the old aunt's share was worth over a million dollars in company stock when she died. Every week I’d park my Geo in the Albertson’s parking lot. I knew that the people who want to keep New Orleans looking neat didn’t like the idea of cars parking in front of the store because it didn’t fit in with their idea of urban planning. And maybe they were right. People also complained that the store was dark, the prices high, the brand selection scant, the checkout lines intolerably long. But it didn’t bother me one bit. It was Albertson’s, after all, and my Desiree was worth the wait. Besides, it wasn’t always crowded. Once there was absolutely no one waiting for Desiree, and she obviously hadn’t been busy for a while. She’d taken out Teen People from the magazine rack and when I got there, she was looking at a photo of Usher, naked from the waist up, his muscles gleaming. It depressed me a little, but I started working out, doing a zillion stomach crunches to try to match Usher’s abs. In the Albertson’s pharmacy, when I picked up my Zoloft prescription, I also got some sunless tanning foam. I think Desiree noticed. One day she said, “You don’t get Krispy Kreme anymore.” “No,” I said, and I thought about lifting up my t-shirt, but I felt stupid doing it, especially because I wore briefs, not boxers like Usher, and I didn’t wear my cargo pants low enough. The donuts weren’t the first product I’d stopped buying because of Desiree – I switched maple syrups from Aunt Jemima to Log Cabin out of embarrassment – and her noticing their absence from my shopping cart made me determined to finally ask her out. Our relationship had gone on a year already, after all, and we knew each other pretty well. She knew I liked Barilla elbow macaroni and that my favorite soda was the store brand Vanilla Max Cola, especially when they were on sale, three containers for two dollars. And I knew she liked chewing gum and had to wear a wrist guard for her carpal tunnel syndrome. Desiree knew how loyal I was to Albertson’s because I told her how creepy the crowds were at the Wal-Mart SuperCenter in the Lower Garden District and how the cashiers at the Winn-Dixie I went to before Albertson’s opened used to be so lazy and inaccurate. I told her I wouldn’t be caught dead at Langenstein’s or Zuppardo’s or the Whole Foods store where the help all dressed weirdly. And Desiree knew that no matter how long her line was – even if she had ten old ladies with tons of coupons in front of me – that I wouldn’t get checked out by anyone else. But things kept me from popping the question. Like I had a stomach virus that lasted like two weeks and she had to ring up my Sav-On Osco Anti-Diarrheal Capsules – Albertson’s private label was just as good or better than Immodium, I knew – it sort of put a damper on romance, if you know what I mean. When I started to feel better, I told myself as I drove down Tulane Avenue to the store, “This is the day you make the big move.” But I had to go to the men’s room before I finished my shopping, and that’s when I noticed the sign outside it, near the room where the employees punched in and took their breaks. TEAM ALBERTSON’S, it said, NOTHING YOU DO IN YOUR JOB IS WORTH GETTING HURT. Although under that it said PLEASE WORK SAFELY, I took it as a sign that moving our relationship to the next level might mean that either Desiree or I, or both of us, could really get hurt. So I figured I’d wait a little longer. Our minutes together were still special. The next time I felt confident enough to ask her about getting together without the involvement of groceries, my face broke out in a kind of rash. I think the sunless tanning foam did more harm than good above my waist, although when I looked in the mirror, I could see the darker skin made my muscles look more defined. I tried to imagine Desiree’s reaction when she saw me without a shirt for the first time. And I imagined her without her blue Albertson’s polo shirt and drove myself wild. The next time I saw her and handed her a roll of Brawny paper towels, I was about to tell her how much I wanted to see her outside the supermarket when the cashier in the next aisle called over to Desiree for help with a jammed register. Desiree hurried with the rest of my order and left me to the retarded bag boy. I was so rattled, I ended up with paper instead of plastic. Finally one morning it got to be too much. This is it, I told myself as I scribbled my grocery list on a Post-It note, the way I always did. I’m going to tell Desiree how I feel about her and find out whether she feels the same way about me, I thought. I was pretty sure she did, but despite my new abs, I’m not the most confident sort of guy. Still, I was ready to declare my love for Desiree, no matter what. I did some stomach crunches and then grabbed a bowl of Multi-Grain Cheerios ($3.19 with my Preferred Savings Card) and glanced at the morning paper. I don’t know what made me turn to the business section, because I never read it. But I glanced at its front page and saw a headline that made my head spin. Albertson’s was leaving New Orleans. It was selling its four stores in Gretna and the northshore to Sav-A-Center, but the three other stores would close. My store – my store and Desiree’s – would be gone, just two years after it had opened with such promise. An Albertson’s executive said the company would only stay in markets where it could be the number one or two store. Here it was in fourth place with no hope of getting a large market share. No hope? Were they kidding? There’s always hope. If Joe Albertson hadn’t died in 1993, I’m sure things would be different. He would never make this the city that Albertson’s forsook. Joe would have stayed and fought Wal-Mart and Winn Dixie and the rest. Besides, who has to be number one or two immediately? You just need to get people to like you. Everyone seemed really subdued when I got to Albertson’s that afternoon. Oddly, Desiree didn’t look unhappy. When I expressed my shock, she just shrugged and said, “Didn’t you know? The store’s been for sale for months.” I opened my mouth but nothing came out. The next time I went in, I managed to ask Desiree what she was going to do in June when the store closed. “Oh, I was moving to Vicksburg anyway,” she told me as she scanned my three bottles of Albertson’s drinking water. “My boyfriend’s stepfather owns a lot of property there, and I’m tired of living here.” “Yeah,” I said numbly. “Me too.” She had to call me as I was walking away because I forgot one of my bottles of drinking water. “Hey, you forgot something!” she said. It occurred to me that she didn’t call me by name, that she probably didn’t even know my name although I’d sometimes paid with my Hibernia debit card with my name written right on it. I’d lost Desiree. And maybe even worse, I’d lost Albertson’s. Where would I get my special chocolaty frozen yogurt now? My Fiesta Blend frozen vegetables? My Zoloft? Maybe, like Albertson’s, I was a loser from Idaho who didn’t belong here. I dropped off my groceries at home and then I walked and walked. Eventually, despite my depression, I realized I was hungry and so I went into the first restaurant I saw, some little Vietnamese place. Because I’d been buying so many groceries to see Desiree, I hadn’t eaten out in a really long time. The food at this restaurant was amazing: I had a Vietnamese po-boy made with grilled pork and a chunky, spreadable pate, all of it pressed between a crusty French roll with carrot strips, jalapeno, fresh cilantro and a cucumber cut like a pickle spear. For dessert, the waitress recommended an icy strawberry mango shake. That’s when I looked at her and fell in love. She told me her name right off: Thu. And I told her mine. At the bottom of my shake was a pile of tapioca pearls that I slurped up greedily. Thu smiled as she brought me the check. I gave her the biggest tip I ever gave a waitress. “Come back soon,” Thu said as I was about to leave the cash register. Even though Albertson’s and Desiree broke my heart, life goes on. I visit the Vietnamese restaurant a lot these days. I’m working up the courage to ask Thu out. |
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